A Popular Guy
by Selene Sokal
Summary: Yang had always thought of snooping through her teammates' diaries as part of her Big Sister's prerogative. What she found, however, set her on a quest to answer a question she never thought she'd ask: Just -how- many girls are into Jaune Arc?


Reading Ruby's diary had long been a favorite pastime of Yang's. She'd been doing it since Ruby was little, and, frankly, Ruby had only gotten worse at protecting her diary as she'd grown older. She wasn't getting lazier; it was just that her inventive locks and elaborate hiding places were often just… absurdly done, in a way that Yang barely had to try to circumvent. But even if there was no sport in it, it was Yang's Big Sister Prerogative to snoop through her little sister's diary.

And it was useful intel. From this, she was able to learn that her little sister had finally entered that thrilling and exciting phase of noticing boys. Not that she'd quite realized it yet, but it wasn't hard to read between the lines when so many of her entries were only a few lines about any of her other friends (though Yang was a little put out to see some of her best pranks were barely even worth a line's description), but several paragraphs about a fairly boring meeting she happened to have with the certain leader of a certain other team.

Yep, Ruby was crushing _hard_ on Jaune Arc. And it made sense—they were both oddballs who got along well, and, hey, she couldn't really fault her sister's taste: Jaune was cute, in a dorky sort of way. Pyrrha's training had gone a long way to help him shape up physically, and he was a passionate, likeable guy who, Yang was certain, would make some woman very happy some day. Ideally, she'd prefer if that woman wasn't her sister, though she had to admit, it was probably better him than most of the other men in their circles. Yang had to wait and see, but by reading Ruby's diary, she got the heads up to start putting some real scrutiny on Mr. Arc's intentions with her precious kid sister.

The real problem emerged, though, when Ruby's diary wasn't the only one Yang was reading.

Weiss, it seems, was an obsessive diarist, to the point where Yang was starting to wonder how she found the time to make so many entries without any of her teammates noticing. She was also disappointed how trivial it was to pick the expensive looking lock on the cover. But once picked, it was immediately evident that Weiss's problems ran a whole lot deeper than any of them had realized. She was a relentlessly self-critical girl, and she seemed to be permanently regretful for every moment of anger or condescending remark she made. Yang felt bad reading this—not for the invasion of privacy, that was just part of her lovable personality—because it seemed that Weiss generally agreed with their criticisms of her, she just had a tendency to speak without thinking and she seemed aware of how deep her father's influence went with her. She was just too proud to admit it anywhere else but in this diary.

It created a heartbreaking cycle of acting without thinking, isolating herself from her friends, beating herself up in her diary, and going back to speaking the way her father raised her… which set off another round of isolation and brutal self-critique. As much as Yang liked teasing the girl, she really did love her teammates, and she really, really wanted to find a way to help her out.

But the problem was that Weiss seemed to have her worst regrets with a certain blonde doofus. The same blonde doofus her sister seemed to be so infatuated with. She had, in a secret admitted only to her diary, somehow found his awkward and cheesy first attempts to ask her out to be charming, and she admired his boldness, but her pride and family status wouldn't let her show anything other than disdain. And now that she'd shown him such disdain, she couldn't stop—or she would seem like a flighty, unserious girl. It was clear that Weiss hated herself for it, and would relentlessly beat herself up for creating this situation where the boy she was enamored with was clearly into her, only she could not accept him.

It was, all around, a very sad situation. If she didn't know that helping Weiss would hurt Ruby, Yang would have leapt to her teammate's aid, helping her work through her issues and making sure she got her man. But how would Ruby feel to see her chance slip away right as she was realizing her attraction to Jaune? At the same time, now she couldn't help Ruby pursue Jaune, because she knew that it would _destroy_ Weiss to make her watch as her partner was the one to take advantage of her mistake.

Normally, Yang would just let the problem figure itself out, try to help Weiss and Ruby through their feelings and mitigate the fallout, and, in all honesty... tell Blake about it in private so they could have a good laugh about how ridiculous their team was.

_Except_, Yang had had the misfortune to also have also read Blake's diary.

Well, diary was a strong word for it. Blake didn't keep a diary per se, but rather, more like a notebook of story ideas… stories like the ones Blake enjoyed reading… only these were of an even more adult variety… and included names and characters that just happened to be real people they knew. What Yang had first thought to be excellent blackmail material buried deep in her closet, even better hidden than where she kept her usual smut, it quickly became _way_ too weird for her to want to let anyone know what she saw.

The worst part was, if it wasn't for the fact they were about their friends, the stories were, in Yang's opinion, _really_ good. They really got her going, reading about Pyrrha delighting in her own meek submission to the desires of her team leader, or one she had really enjoyed about Jaune turning the tables on Ms. Goodwitch, and having a very enjoyable time using her riding crop.

Oh yeah, that was the other thing: _they all featured Jaune_.

Jaune with pretty much every woman at Beacon. Pyrrha, Weiss, Ruby, Ruby's weird friend Penny, Nora, Ms. Goodwitch, one with all the girls of NDGO, Emerald and her creepy team leader, some woman named Ilia that Yang was pretty sure didn't go to this school, Coco, Velvet, and one about May Zedong that made it pretty clear Blake didn't actually know anything about her beyond vaguely knowing what she looked like. There were even a couple of stories about _her_, which was partially flattering, especially because Blake's descriptions of her body were extremely lush and, in Yang's unbiased opinion, accurate, but at the same time, very weird for more than the normal reasons for finding your partner's been writing porn about you and the guy across the hall. Blake, it seemed, had an unsettling fixation of pairing her with Ruby as well as Jaune. Something she'd probably want to have a very stern word with her on, if she could ever bring herself to admit she knew about the journal.

But amongst those stories, there were a handful of unfinished stories, all about Jaune with an unnamed, black-haired cat Faunus. Real subtle there. But they never seemed to get more than a page before they were abandoned, and they never had any sexual content—just normal, romantic encounters, like going on dates, encouraging each other through hardships, and one, which Blake had _violently_ scribbled out, where he told her—sorry, the _unnamed Faunus girl_—that he thought her ears were beautiful and she should never feel ashamed of them.

Blake had it _bad_. And it was honestly just as heartbreaking as the rest of them. Encountered in a really weird context, but it's not like that would be enough for Yang to leave her partner and close friend out in the cold. She had to help them, all of them, without revealing that she'd been invading their privacy and without hurting any of their feelings.

The problem was, Yang didn't know what to do and had pretty much nobody to go to about it. Her teammates were right out, and telling Pyrrha about the diaries would be a quick way to get someone murdered by javelin. Nora would be the logical choice, but Ren had had the both of them swear to a two-week moratorium on cooperating on anything, "for the good of all," because, apparently, they only made things dramatically worse for everyone when they worked together. Normally, she would have gone to Uncle Qrow for advice, and then done the exact opposite of what he suggested, but with Ruby involved, the only way that would end is Jaune getting bisected by a scythe. Though, in that regard, maybe killing Jaune _was_ the best solution if… nope, that was the exact point she realized she needed serious help on this.

There was absolutely no reason for any sane person to think her uncle might have a good idea.

* * *

"You have come to Coco for her wisdom."

Yang stared up at Coco, wearing her signature sunglasses, but also dressed in a turban and some kind of elaborate robe, seated in what could only be called a makeshift throne, and taking a long drag from a ludicrously long pipe—one that Yang was 90% sure did not have any tobacco, or really, anything, in it.

"You have questions about my pipe, do you?" Lacking words, Yang merely nodded. "Found all this at a thrift store. Wasn't even 20 Lien, and best of all, Yatsuhashi _hates_ it, so I'm gonna be dressing and talking like this for a while."

The man in question looked up from his book to grumble, "I am still in the room, you know."

"Yeah, well, we don't care. Anyways, what's on your mind, Yang?"

"Well, you know how my sister's got that crush on Jaune?" Coco nodded. Even before she read her diary, Yang knew that Ruby was adorably unsubtle in following him around like a puppy. "Well, it's also Weiss and Blake. They've got it bad for Vomit Boy."

Coco looked shocked. "Wait, really? Jaune? And all three of them?"

"Yep. Well, not all at once. And plus Pyrrha, obviously."

"Damnit all," Coco cursed, "Ugh, Vel is going to _flip_ about this."

"What's Velvet got to do with this?" Yang asked, uneasily. Velvet was kind of a weird case—she seemed nice enough, Yang felt bad that she got bullied, and she was kind-of friends with JNPR which was enough to make her kind-of friends with RWBY. Except… she always seemed to be _around_. Like, Yang would be taking a walk at night, and off in the darkness, a little off the path, there's Velvet. Wake up in the morning, walk out in the hall, Velvet's standing right next to Team JNPR's door—not walking by, just standing—and it's… weird.

"She's had this crazy paranoia that all you RWBY girls have been secretly aiming to steal Jaune from her." She shrugged. "I don't know what she's thinking about Pyrrha, cause she only ever talks about you four, but honestly, I am not sticking my nose into that question, cause I don't actually want to learn more about it. She gets… kind of scary about him."

Yang groaned in annoyance with the revelation. Mostly because she didn't like being lumped in with the rest of her team on this matter, but also for a much more pressing reason. "So you're telling me there are _five_ girls who are aiming straight at Jaune?"

"Six, actually." Yang's eyes bugged at the revelation. "Yeah, I know, none of this makes sense to me either. But her name's Arslan, she's one of the visiting students. Good news is, it's not like she's in love with Jaune or anything, she's just got some crazy Mistralian vendetta business against Pyrrha. Has vowed to defeat her in all things or whatever, and that apparently means stealing her "boyfriend." Again, asking questions is the first step to having to learn more, so I'm keeping my distance."

"So, six women have, more or less independently decided to go after the biggest dork in my year, and we're both in agreement—there's a very real chance this will end violently. Do you have any advice for how we can avoid an extremely ugly showdown?"

Coco sighed and lowered her sunglasses, allowing Yang to make real eye contact. "No, sorry Yang. I really do try to keep away from it. But if it comes down to it, you know I've got to stick with my girl. I don't know if I'm going to have to shoot you or something, but I am very sorry about it."

"No hard feelings," she replied. Kicking Coco's ass could actually be kind of fun. "So we just think everyone's lost their minds?"

"I just want you to know, last year, things were _never_ this crazy. I don't know what's wrong with you all, but we were _extremely normal_ kids."

"Pfft. Sure. Whatever. Do you have any _extremely normal_ advice I could use?"

Coco pursed her lips as she thought it through. "No. I'm sorry, but I've been trying to talk Velvet into either making her move or giving up on him, but she just gets worse. And I'd bet money your teammates will be the same way—if Velvet was right about them, sounds like they're as dug in as she is. I wish I could give you more help, but I think we've just got to accept that it is going to be ugly, and we can just try to be there for our friends."

"Wow, that was… surprisingly helpful."

"Thanks, I'll ignore the 'surprisingly.' One question, though."

"Shoot."

"Are you trying to bang Arc, too?"

Yang flipped Coco the bird as she turned to leave the room.

Yatsuhashi stood up from his corner. "Wait, I believe I can offer some advice on the-"

Coco held up her hand. "NOPE! Only I get to offer advice, because only I have the pipe. So move it, Xiao Long!"

* * *

Leaving CFVY's dorm, Yang felt like she was still a little unsatisfied with Coco's advice. Yes, it was sensible, yes, it would probably be helpful, but she didn't like ever accepting that her friends would have to get hurt. She wanted to find out some way that would magically sidestep her problems and let everyone win. Was that, in a world of super powered monster fighters, really so hard?

As she stumbled through the hallway, pondering her options, she suddenly realized that the answer to her problems happened to be just in front of her.

"Hey! Cinder! Cinder Fall!"

The dark haired girl turned slowly as Yang jogged to catch up with her in the hallway. She was with her teammates—Emerald was friends with Ruby, so she was pretty alright, and Mercury was just garbage, so they balanced out to "Okay." But Cinder was a weird, looming presence that seemed to always been calculating and plotting even when they were doing normal things, like trying to seem like they were awake in Port's class. But she was just about the only person she knew who could give her advice on this matter.

"You're evil, right?"

Cinder and her teammates stepped back in alarm at the question, and were too stunned by her forthrightness to answer for a while. At last, Mercury answered. "You have to admit it, boss, she's kind of got you there." But he quickly shut up as Cinder fixed him with a steely glare before turning to Yang.

"That's… subjective. From my perspective, evil is-"

"Yeah, I'm not here for an ethics lecture. I just wanted someone who'd have a less-than-friendly perspective on a difficult interpersonal thing that's going on with my team."

"Oh?" She seemed intrigued by the opportunity in her usual, creepy way. Girl was way too invested in teenaged drama, and Yang didn't like it one bit—but if that kind of investment could help her out, maybe she could like it maybe half of one bit.

"So you know Jaune Arc? Blond, this tall, kind of an idiot? Well," she sighed. It was one thing to have to explain this to Coco, who she had some history of gossiping with; it was another thing to share it with a woman who may or may not be the devil. "It might be, maybe, kind of, weirdly possible that all of my teammates are in love with him? And also his partner and maybe some other girls too."

Cinder just stared at her blankly, trying to fit together the words "Jaune" and "in love with." Emerald kept looking like she was trying to figure out the punchline to what must be Yang's joke, and Mercury looked like he was about to violently ill. Which was a win for Yang, so some good had come out of this.

"Anyways, I'm worried that all my friends are about to start fighting each other over a boy and, while that's really stupid and immature, I can't think of a way to avoid anyone getting hurt. But they're my closest friends and you're a sociopath, so maybe you've got some insight that I'm missing?"

If she objected to being labeled a sociopath, Cinder didn't show it. Instead, she turned away from Yang to speak with her teammates. "Emerald!" she hissed, "Why was I not informed of Arc's abilities? He's already seduced Nikos, Rose, Schnee, _and _Belladonna!"

"Can we not say 'seduced' when talking about my sister?" The three of them, shocked, whirled to look at her. "Oh come on, you're barely even whispering! I can _obviously_ hear you. And he hasn't really seduced anyone, he's just kind of… stumbled into a hormonal minefield?"

"…Be that as it may," Cinder began, "It seems to me that Mr. Arc possesses some kind of alarming abilities with the opposite sex. The sort of thing that a _competent assistant,_" Emerald winced at those words, "would have found out in her preliminary analysis. He may prove to be the linchpin to my plans for this school… and for all of Remnant."

"Can still hear you," Yang added, but Cinder and her team seemed to have lost their interest in talking with Yang, already walking away. "Alright, whatever!" she shouted after them, "You're not fooling anybody, by the way! You know what! I don't even need you! _I_ can plot to overthrow Beacon way better than-"

"I don't know what you're shouting about," came an unpleasantly strict and familiar voice, "but I'm just going to assign you a pre-emptive detention before you can do whatever it is you're planning, Ms. Xiao Long."

She turned to see Ms. Goodwitch, lips pursed, eyes narrowed, and riding crop—_damnit why'd she have to read that story with the riding crop_—folded across her arms.

* * *

Detention was served in a classroom that only had herself and Ms. Goodwitch. She was assigned some lines to copy, but Yang and Goodwitch both knew that there wasn't actually a charge of misbehavior against her, so Yang wasn't really copying them. At the same time, she saw where Goodwitch was coming from, and, if she was in her shoes, she'd understand giving herself pre-emptive detention before she burned the school down.

But on the plus side, she was an adult who probably had seen things like this before in her career at Beacon, which meant she might have some actually useful advice. Even if, judging from her attitude, it was likely she'd never personally had a successful date in her life. So she took her chance and spoke up. "So, uh, if a member of my team turned out to be infatuated with someone, and they-"

Goodwitch looked up from her desk with dull interest. "Is this about your sister?"

Yang blinked in surprise. How much did the faculty know about this? And wasn't that kind of weird? "…Partially. It's kind of one of those love triangle-ish situations and I think she's going to get hurt."

"Her and Mr. Arc, I take it?" She nodded, guessing that as unsubtle as Ruby had been, it shouldn't surprise her that even the faculty was noticing. "This isn't easy for me to say, as an educator, but… I think we have to agree that they're not a good fit for each other—they really bring out each others' worst impulses, don't you agree?"

While she was looking for advice, Yang wasn't sure she _did_ agree with that, and Goodwitch's tone sounded more like she was trying to persuade her on it… which made even less sense, but today was not one for sense.

"If you would compare it with his blossoming relationship with Ms. Nikos, why, I'm sure you'd see that there's clearly a better partner for Mr. Arc."

Now the line had been crossed from "normal weird" to "far too weird." She had to object. "Wait, hold on a second—this makes no sense, why are you saying- why do you _care _about any of this?"

"Why, I'm- I just- I'm _concerned about my students!_ It's not like we have a bet going or anything!" She gave a forced, fake laugh to a silent room.

Yang simply stared at her until she broke. "Alright, fine! There's a bet. I thought it was obvious Mr. Arc would end up with Ms. Nikos—and if she wasn't so damn passive I would have won this _months_ ago—but Ozpin's insistent he'll end up with your sister, and I cannot afford to let that man be right. He's _infuriating_ when he wins."

Alright, so the faculty were exactly the sort of people Yang suspected they were. Buncha weirdos making bets on the dating lives of teenagers… it was something _she_ should be doing, not _them._ "Well, good news for your bet—seems none of you are right, unless you had Pyrrha, Ruby, Blake, Weiss and some other-"

Ms. Goodwitch immediately gripped her by the shoulder, so tightly she could feel the nails pressing into her skin as she looked Yang dead in the eye. "You're not in love with him, right? _Right?_"

Her insistence was terrifying. "No? What? No! I'm not- Why?"

At her refusal, Ms. Goodwitch breathed a sigh of relief and released her grip. "There were… other bets, besides mine and the headmaster's. Dr. Oobleck was _insistent _that we were writing off Ms. Schnee too quickly, and Jimmy- _General Ironwood_ wanted to get in on the action with an inexplicable bet on some Atlesian girl named Penny—he's really not a smart gambler. But Professor Port," her voice became serious, "wagered that Mr. Arc would win over not only Ms. Nikos, but also the entirety of your team, and estimated there might be other girls as well. We laughed at it, but…" Her expression darkened. "We cannot afford for Peter to be right about anything, the _universe_ cannot allow it. All that we count on the stability of reality depends on it! Do you understand me?"

A Grimm would feel the grip of pure terror from that look. "Yes? I think?" Yang barely squeaked out.

"There can be _no_ hesitation here, Ms. Xiao Long. This is a matter of paramount importance." Then she said, with utter seriousness, the most ridiculous sentence Yang had ever heard. "Under no circumstances may you fall in love with Jaune Arc."

With that, Ms. Goodwitch left the classroom, detention forgotten, leaving a shaken Yang to ponder exactly how this had become such a life and death situation.

Damnit. Why did an _authority figure_ have to tell her there was something she couldn't do?

* * *

Yang wandered back to her floor, left with no greater sense of what to do and, frankly, in a much weirder position than she started. She'd received a message on her scroll from Coco that there were actually seven girls after Jaune—she'd forgotten that there was a girl with multicolored hair who never spoke but paid Velvet very good money for certain pictures of JNPR's leader.

Oh, yeah, apparently Velvet _also_ had started a thriving black market of photos of the kid Yang mostly teased for being the second biggest dork she knew. Yeah, as painful it was to admit, Jaune was fairly good looking, and most of the Huntsmen she knew were duds, but was that enough to make half the school go nuts about him? Maybe, and it was hard to think this, but maybe she was the weird one? After all, seems she was the odd one out, here. This was getting… unsettling.

She had to go to the one person she should _never_ go for advice.

"Nora, I need your help."

Nora smiled wide and gestured for Yang to sit down on one of the beds in the JNPR dorm. "Well, you've come to the right-"

Ren burst into the room. "No, no, NO! We had a moratorium! They still don't know what happened to that Bullhead!"

Of course Ren would be nearby—the two of them were practically, at some times, probably literally, welded together. "But it's about Jaune," she whined.

On that name, Nora and Ren both clasped a hand to their face in exasperation. An annoyed Ren asked, "Which girl is it?"

"Wait, what?"

"If it's a problem about Jaune, and you're coming to us about it, it's almost certainly about a girl who's in love with him and he's too dense to notice."

She stared at the two of them, mouth agape. "You mean you know about this?"

"Is there any way we couldn't?" Ren laughed. "This school has all of three students who know subtlety and a hundred who know firepower. "

"Pyrrha's underwear situation has gotten _really_ explicit," Nora added. "Not that I'm complaining," she said with a faraway smile.

"I am," Ren interjected, "It's been very distracting."

"Well, she's definitely one of the reasons I'm here. But I'm also here because of Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Velvet, some other girls whose name I forgot, really, I'm here because the whole situation is messed up and going to end in disaster."

"Wait, Blake?" Nora cocked her head, quizzically. "That one's new to us."

"Oh yeah, Blake's in. Her interest was," she shuddered, "_intense._ But… if you guys knew about all this, do you have a plan for helping him, uh, let girls down gently?"

Ren sighed. "We did. For a while. We really tried to help Pyrrha out and tried to make sure he didn't end up really hurting anyone, but after a while, we just…"

"We got sick of nothing happening!"

"Exactly. I figured, give the girls some time and they'll realize that Jaune's not going to suddenly discover that they're in love with him, they'll either make their move or move on."

Yang didn't want to agree with their assessment, basically the same advice from Coco she was already lukewarm on, but she couldn't deny, it was a path that was agreeable to her, particularly in the way she didn't have to do anything. Except for one thing. "What happens if this large group of heavily armed, combat trained women decide that they're going to settle this by violence?"

"Well, in that case, I would think I'd win."

At that voice, they all turned to see Pyrrha Nikos standing in the doorway, looking every inch the peerless champion in her armor and tiara. She had a bemused look on her face and Yang could tell that both Nora and Ren were radiating panic at the powder keg they'd just lit.

Nora broke the silence. "Oh, uh, hey Pyrrha, we were just-"

"Talking, I know. I'd like to speak with Yang. Would you mind if I had the room?"

Her treacherous "friends" scurried out. Pyrrha moved in and sat on the bed across from Yang—confident, self-assured, like she owned it. Yang noted from the nearby mess that it was probably Jaune's. There was no subtlety in her meaning there.

"Heard you've been asking around about Jaune and… the other girls." Her expression was cool and dispassionate—not betraying any of her thoughts. But then she leaned forward and smiled. "So… you've figured out my plans."

No? No she hadn't? There were plans? This story was three-four conspiracies deep right now and she had tuned out somewhere around Cinder's. But no reason to tip her hand now. She focused her gaze, staring down the Invincible Girl across from her. "Yeah. I did. I just… don't see _why_ you're doing it." Yeah, that was a good lie! She'd totally explain her plans to her now!

Pyrrha sighed. "Can you blame me?" Yes? Maybe? Why was everyone so _weird?_ "I find someone, who, for once in my life, sees a woman—not a champion, not a status symbol, not the girl on the pedestal—a _woman_, and in that man I see potential. Tremendous, untapped potential. I train him, draw out that potential into something admirable, something truly great." But now her countenance darkened. "Only to find a pack of harlots poised to steal him! Now do you see what I'm after?"

"No?" She sighed. "I'm gonna level with you, Cereal Girl. I have no idea what anyone's plans are. I lied in the hope you'd explain your plan, and now I'm only more confused."

"Yang, I worked really hard on this." Pyrrha seemed genuinely disappointed with her, which kind of hurt, but, in Yang's opinion, there was no shame in not getting the plot when things were this dumb. "I realized that what I wanted was validation more than anything—to see all those haughty, condescending girls realize how badly they misjudged him. To see them realize the extent of their mistake, to see them humbled, when the dynamic has flipped, when _they_ pursued _him_—that was what I wanted."

Okay, she was definitely starting to sound a little… intense. But, Yang considered, compared to plotting to murder everyone, this was actually a huge _win_ for sanity! "Yeah, okay, sounds like the sort of normal problems we're all dealing with," she gave a fake laugh to try to lighten the mood, but Pyrrha still had her crazy half-smile. "But that's not really a _plan_, so I'm still not sure whatever that's supposed to be."

"Oh, it was quite simple," She leaned even closer in, making the whole thing way too face-to-face for Yang's liking. "I just had to offhandly mention a few things to Weiss—she takes anything I say so seriously—and make sure Blake saw some… let's just call them 'strategically timed moments' with Jaune-"

"When his shirt was off, yeah."

"It was more elaborate than that!" she snapped, "And the rest were even easier. All the desire was already there, I just had to draw it out. Soon, they'll reach the tipping point, when they can't hold their feelings back any longer, and then I'll offer them the only path that allows all of us to be happy. They'll have no choice but to accept it! Can't you picture it, Yang? Won't it be glorious? All of us, united in the invincible power of love!" She had the crazed smile of a prophet, which was even scarier since it was only six inches from Yang's face. But then, her expression turned serious, "And the only one who can stop me is you. So, Yang… what's it gonna be?"

Yang pondered her words for a second, before coming to her conclusion. "No, that actually works just fine for me."

"W- _what?_"

"Yeah, so long as everyone's okay with it and it's all consensual, it's good on my end. My whole issue was that I didn't want my sister or my friends to get hurt, but it seems like you've got your angles figured out and I'm not going to judge anyone for having a non-traditional relationship. Pretty sure my dad, my mom, and Ruby's mom had some sort of arrangement like this back when they were at Beacon."

Pyrrha sat back, dazed. She had evidently been expecting, probably even hoping for, a fight. It seemed like the truth was simply that everyone but her was crazy, but she could probably just leave them to their craziness and it'll all figure itself out. After all, Weiss, Blake, and Pyrrha were the sensible ones, so they'd probably do a better job of it than she could.

So she got up and left, only to, while exiting, knock over the man her entire day had been around. "Oof- sorry Yang, I wasn't looking." Aww, he apologized even though it was clearly her fault. Jaune, for all his other traits, was a very sweet boy. She always liked that about him. Easy to push around and all.

But, in the hallway of the dormitories, she was suddenly very aware of everything around her. Pyrrha was behind her in the room, her eyes burning a hole through her aura in the fury that she'd just had so much physical contact with her beloved partner. She could see Ruby and Weiss on one end of the hall, and Blake and Velvet on the other, the four of them paying very close attention to Jaune and also, she noticed, to each other. Seemed they were all weighing whether or not to sweep in and be the one to help him up. Emerald was nearby too, no doubt on Cinder's orders. With all this around her, it was hard not to realize the enormous ridiculousness that was her life.

But in that moment, she suddenly had a very, very evil idea of her own.

She reached a hand down to help him up. "Hey, sorry about that." She was certain she could hear a pin drop in the hall, so focused was everyone on her words. But she had spent an entire day being the responsible one worrying about everyone else's feelings even though they were all being crazy. That was for her, and also Nora, not literally everyone else! So really, they all had this coming. "You doing anything later tonight? Wanna head into town and get dinner together? Maybe catch a movie?"

It was hard to make sense of words over the piercing shrieks that immediately filled the hall, but Yang was pretty sure he said yes.


End file.
